


A New Partenship

by literatureforlife



Category: Pathfinder (RPG)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 22:55:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1364806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literatureforlife/pseuds/literatureforlife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story is about one of my Pathfinder characters, Captain Constance Strombane of the Bloody Bane. This story takes place after a major battle between the Pirates of the Shackles and an enemy fleet. In her guilt at missing the battle, Constance has returned to Port Peril to find Captain Merril Pegsworthy, she has some "romantic" history with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Partenship

Constance leans back in her rickety chair, like everything else in the dingy room, the poor excuse for furniture is held together by the dust caked on its frame. Nursing the bottle of too-expensive rum, she watches the limp form strewn across the soiled, stained “bed.” Captain Merril Pegsworthy had fallen on bad luck in the battle and wore it poorly.  
She watches the deep, steady rise and fall of Pegsworthy’s broad chest; in and out like the tide, a sign of life surer than anything she’d seen last night in the bar.

She’d found him in the midst of a pity party deeper than the Fever Sea, hardly recognizable in the ragged clothing, drinking away life and dignity, in the filthiest rum hole Port Peril had to offer. Constance tried to approach him in a gentle manner, in respect of the losses recently suffered, but his drunken idiocy made this impossible. He had actually called her a serving wench. The poor, lost fool. In the end, a quick bash to the head with her pistol soon took matters out of his besotted hands entirely.

With no small amount of effort, Constance drug the limp body out of the bar, ducking and diving around the combatants of the brawl started when Pegsworthy’s head met her pistol butt, and down the street to the nearest inn- if inn is the correct word to describe the ramshackle, rat infested conglomeration of rooms. What the innkeeper thought when he saw the pair, she would never know. People of Port Peril knew better than to ask questions. Once in the room, she stripped him down to his pants, taking even his wooden leg; gave him a once over with a wet rag (preferring he not be the dirtiest thing in the room); and left him to sleep off both rum and concussion. 

Sudden movement on the bed stirs Constance from her reflections. She rises and goes to him with a proffered mug of ale. Still a bit groggy, Pegsworthy lifts himself to a sitting position, notices the mug, starts to reach for it then notices who holds it. All at once, he wakes fully and shouts, “You cowardly, traitorous bitch!” 

“Is that a no to the drink then?” She sets the drink down.

“What do you want whore?”

Constance considers him a moment and says, “Definitely a no.” She sets the bug beside the bed. “I thought to find Captain Merril Pegsworthy to share in adventure with me. I have a proposition,” she waits for him to meet her eyes, “instead I found you. Is this really what you have been reduced to?”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t come. I lost everything, my men, my ship…all lost,” he paused a moment, “and you weren’t there! Do not speak to me of adventure and propositions.”

“The battle was won. I’m sorry you lost your ship, but there was naught I could have done?”

“You could have fought! You could have supported us. You, you could have…” he trails off that lost look coming back to his eyes, replacing the anger. Constance can almost see the battle reflected there.

“As you say, I wasn’t there for the battle, but it is not my fault you lost your ship and I will not be blamed for it.”  
Rage returns full force to his eyes and courses through his body as he stands. He falters for a moment, just now noticing the lack of a leg, but catches himself in time to stand none too solidly on his single foot. “So, I’m a bad captain am I? It’s my fault is it?” he makes his way to her in one hop that in other circumstances would have been comical. As it was, he was menacing in his anger, but Constance did not back down.  
“I didn’t say that. You’ll not put those words in my mouth Merril Pegsworthy, and you’ll not blame me for your misfortune. I may not have been at the battle, but I did what I could. My crew and I, we were on the Hell’s Night. I met the Admiral, face to face.” Constance looks away from him as an involuntary shiver runs through her. “I am lucky to have escaped with my life.”  
For the first time Merril really looks at Constance and notices the fading bruises covering her face and shoulders. He glowers at the floor. “Ah lass, perhaps your right.” He half falls, half hops back to the bed and sinks heavily down on it with a great sigh.  
“So what are you going to do now?”  
“Do? What am I going to do? I have nothing lass, no ship, no crew, nothing. I would have to start completely over and besides, no ship will ever replace my girl, Bonaventura. She was beautiful. She was my home. I have stolen other ships, added them to my small fleet, but always I sailed her. Stole her right out from under the nose of the Andoran navy, I did. Now she rots on the bottom of the sea.” He places his head in his hands and is quiet for a while.  
Constance waits and when he does not speak again, she goes to kneel before him and forces his head up to look at her. “I know what it is like to lose your home. I understand the gut wrenching agony, knowing you will never again walk her timbers, hold her wheel or watch the wind fill her sails. But aren’t you Captain Pegsworthy? Come on man!” He refuses to meet her eyes.“ Or did you lose your manhood along with your ship?” He glares at the remark. “Prove it then.”  
“Not much of a Captain without a ship.”  
“You’re a pirate, steal a ship.”  
He glances at her, half smiles and shake his head and sighs, “it’s not as easy as all that lass. You’re young yet, you’ll learn. Me, maybe I’m getting to old for this life.”  
“So, what? You’ll sit around drinking yourself in to a stupor every night until there is nothing left of the proud man I met at Rickety Squib’s? The man who with his own strong hands blessed my own ship? I would not see that man lost to this.”  
He looks at her for a long moment, her youthful trust bringing a small spark back to his eyes. “Come, come lass, give me my dignity.”  
Constance rises and crosses the room. From beside her “chair” she picks up his wooden leg and carries it back to him. With one sharp twist the limb is restored to its rightful place “Now, what is this adventure of yours?”  
Constance considers him for a moment then a smile spreads across her face. From the top of her blouse she pulls a tightly rolled piece of paper. Pegsworthy mumbles something that sounded like, “didn’t think anything else would fit in there.” She unrolls it and shows him a map. “When we met I was having my ship squibbed. Well, I found this beauty in the captain’s cabin. Surely there is something to this. Together we can find this island and see what’s so important it needs to be documented.”  
Pegsworthy rises from the bed deliberately, reaches for his hat and places it firmly on his head, before sweeping it from his head in a grand gesture, “Captain Merril Pegsworthy at your service madam.”  
He straightens up in time to catch Constance as she jumps up and wraps her legs around his stomach. They fall back to the “bed” in a tangle of limbs and make such a display of their eagerness for each other, for possible treasure, even the rats turn away in shame.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this at all let me know and I will try to post some more. I love this character, she's one of my favorites to play.


End file.
